Full-scale collapse testing of a steel stiffened plate structure under axial-compressive loading at a temperature of −80\ub0C

The aim of the paper was to develop a test database of the ultimate strength characteristics of full-scale\ua0steel stiffened plate structures under axial compressive loading at a temperature of −80\ub0C. This paper is a\ua0sequel to the authors’ articles (Paik et al. 2020a, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2020.05.026 and Paik et al.\ua02020b, https://doi.org/10.1080/17445302.2020.1787930). In contrast to the earlier articles associated with\ua0room temperature or cryogenic condition, this paper investigated the effect of a low temperature at −80\ub0C\ua0which is within the boundary range of temperature of the ductile-to-brittle fracture transition for carbon\ua0steels. A material model representing the test conditions was also proposed to capture the characteristics\ua0of carbon steels at low temperatures both in tension and in compression, and it was used in finite element\ua0method simulations of the full-scale experiment. A comparison between numerical analyses and\ua0experiments showed that the proposed model could successfully predict the failure modes and\ua0ultimate strength characteristics at low temperatures for stiffened plate structures under axial\ua0compressive loading conditions